characteristic faiths and passions of his age, then indeed the limitation of the age will be in a sense the limitation of the philosophy; and with the life whose temperament it reflectively embodied the philosophy will pass away. It will pass away, but it will not be lost. A future humanity will, if civilization healthily progresses, inherit the old kingdom, and reembody the truly essential and immortal soul of its old life. This new humanity, including in itself the spirit of the old, will need something, at least, of the old philosophy to express in reflective fashion its own attitude towards the universe. This something that it needs of the old philosophy may not be that which the philosopher had himself imagined to be his most absolute possession. Like the statesman, he will have builded better than he knew. As Cæsar’s Roman empire had for its destiny not to exclude the Germans, as Cæsar had driven out Ariovistus, but to civilize and to Christianize them, and finally to pass in great part over to their keeping, so Plato’s philosophy had for its office to suggest thoughts that Christianity afterwards made the common treasure of the very humanity that his mind would have regarded as hopelessly barbarian. No, the philosopher’s work is not lost when, in one sense, his system seems to have been refuted by death, and when time seems to have scattered to scorn the words of his dust-filled mouth. His immediate end may have been unattained; but thousands of years may not be long enough to develop for humanity the full significance of his reflective thought.
Insight, this curious scrutiny of ours into the truth, keeps here, as you will see, its immediately unpractical, its ultimately significant character. There is indeed a sense in which life has no need of the philosopher. He does not invent life, nor does he lead in its race; he follows after; he looks on; he is no prophet to inspire men; he has a certain air of the playful about him. Plato, in a famous passage, makes sport of the men of the
